Where Worlds Collide

It’s been a long time. The last time I saw Twelfth Night was the 1983 Reading Festival, when they were the opening act on the Sunday, and the late Geoff Mann was the singer.

I wrote a potted history of the band a few years back on this site. At the time, it looked as though the story was over. Since then, continued interest in their music has seen their entire back catalogue reissued and remastered on CD. And finally the band themselves have come out of retirement and taken the stage once more.

The Albany Theatre is not your typical rock venue; the circular venue looked like a cross between the Globe Theatre and a miniature version of The Roundhouse, and is more used to theatrical productions than rock shows. There was an air of anticipation as we waited for the band to hit the stage; what would they be like after all those years?

The opener “The Ceiling Speaks” dispelled any doubts over whether or not they could cut it live. This was actually the first time I’d ever seen Andy Sears fronting the band, and he cut a compelling figure, both a charismatic frontman and a strong voice. I was impressed with the way he interpreted Geoff Mann’s material; he made the songs his own while keeping to the spirit of the originals; not an easy thing to pull off.

The setlist had everything you could want. The first half ranged through the highlights of their career, from the instrumental “Afghan Red” to their last ever recorded song “Blondon Fair”. For the second half, they played the whole of the “Fact and Fiction” album.

High spots were many; a spine-tingling “First New Day” played solo by Andy Sears on piano, really powerful versions of “Sequences” and “Creepshow”, and an emotional final encore of “Love Song”.

It was also one of the most enthusiastic audiences I’ve seen all year (Who says London audiences are jaded and cynical?). Who would have thought complex prog epics such as “We Are Sane” would turn into singalongs? This made for an incredible atmosphere, and made it one of those gigs that will be remembered for a long time.

Not content with having redisovered Rush, the Guardian has now discovered the European phenomenum of “Lady Metal”

On the continent, particularly in Scandinavia and Germany, they have great female rock stars who are largely unknown outside the specialist rock press here.

Bands such as Nightwish, Within Temptation, Lacuna Coil and the Gathering have turned the formula of three or four hairy blokes at the back and an imperious operatic diva at the front into a hugely successful phenomenon. Nightwish in particular are absolutely massive and Within Temptation have also gone platinum in Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere.

I think the success of Nightwish, Within Temptation etc in the continent demonstrate the vast gulf between what’s going on over the channel and the drab indie-centric mainstream scene in Britain. It goes far deeper than the gender of the lead singer; all these bands have a rich symphonic sound that you’ll find in plenty of Euro all-male bands as well.

I can speculate on a few reasons why there’s such a difference in music scenes

• On the continent, metal and even prog are considered valid genres of mainstream rock, rather than being marginalised as they are over here. Even British metal and prog bands find much larger and more enthusiastic audiences in Scandinavia, the Low Countries or Poland than they do in their home country.

• Classical music, including opera, is a bigger part of popular culture, and the influence spills over into rock.

• Most bands sing in English, even when it’s not their first language. This tends to de-emphasise the importance of lyrics, and means musical adventurism matters more than urban social commentary.

• They don’t have a critical environment that’s hostile to anything that’s not directly derivative of The Clash or The Smiths.

• It’s worth noting that Nightwish and Within Temptation have both been going several years, and took several albums to develop their sound. The ‘build-em-up-and-knock-em-down’ attitude of the fashion-driven British scene makes it hard for bands like that to thrive.

As any reader of this blog will know by now, female-fronted rock isn’t just something those weird foreigners do. But the likes of Mostly Autumn, The Reasoning and Breathing Space don’t seem to appear on the mainstream media’s radar screen.

If anyone’s going to see Within Temptation in Manchester next Thursday, I’ll be there. I’ll be wearing a Mostly Autumn T shirt, of course!

It’s list time again. The Guardian are making a list of 1000 albums to hear before you die

Despite its faintly melodramatic title, our list of 1000 albums to hear before you die isn’t meant to be definitive, nor is it meant to be one of those Greatest Albums Of All Time lists. It’s supposed to be more of a miscellany, an eclectic collection of interesting albums, (including Various Artists compilations, which usually don’t get into those kind of lists).

In an attempt to get as wide a spread of music included as possible, all artists were limited to one entry each. Where possible, the list tries to opt for something other than the obvious choice from a legendary artist’s catalogue - Beach Boys Today! instead of Pet Sounds, for example - not to be deliberately abstruse, but to try and get away from reiterating yet again the same points about the same handful of albums that always crop up in 100 Best Albums lists.

Despite being The Guardian’s music critics, they’ve somehow managed to avoid the temptation to fill the entire list with half-forgotten post-punk bands and tediously overrated 80s indie. They’ve even found room for Deep Purple and Genesis!

Natually, classic rock, metal and prog are going to be underrepresented on such a list. But, as the article says:

This is where you come in - we’re looking for you to nominate albums that the list misses, complete with a brief summary of why they should have been included. The best ones will get printed in Friday’s Film And Music section.

These are my contributions:

Blue Öyster Cult - Secret Treaties

The third album from the “thinking man’s metal band” is a multi-layered work of inventive hard rock married to truly wierd sci-fi occult conspiracy lyrics. Songs like “Career of Evil” and “Dominance and Submission” exude a genuine air of menace, and they never bettered the atmospheric epic “Astronomy”. BÖC subsequently moved in a more commercial AOR direction and started having hit singles, but this album still remains the creative high point of their career.

Fish - Raingods with Zippos

The former Marillion frontman has had something of a chequered career since going solo, but this album, featuring Mark Daghorn and Steve Wilson, is one his best. As well as a barnstoming cover of SAHB’s “Faith Healer” which manages to top the original, the highlight is the 20 minute “Plague of Ghosts”, an ambitious piece of work which manages to combine ambient dance and spoken word with symphonic pomp-rock, held together with the big man’s impassioned voice.

Uriah Heep - Salisbury

Uriah Heep really deserve better than being known for making Rolling Stone’s Melissa Mills threaten suicide if they were successful, and for being the principal inspiration for Spinal Tap. Their second album was their most varied and experimental, ranging from the hard rock of “Bird of Prey” to the chant-like acoustic “Lady in Black”. Highlight is the lengthy title track which see Ken Hensley’s mightly Hammond B3 accompanied by brass and woodwind sections. Later albums saw greater commercial success, but they were never quite this inventive again.

Once we get to “M”, there are going to be at least two more. No prizes to readers of this blog for anyone that identifies those two bands, which I’m confident The Grauniad’s writers will overlook.

Congratulations to Matthew and Rachel of The Reasoning, who were married on Saturday.

That’s certainly not a traditional-looking wedding cake.

Profoundly depressing news about travel terror security

Mr Brown said improved security would be installed at the country’s 250 busiest railway stations, as well as airports, ports and more than 100 other sensitive locations.

“Additional screening” of baggage and passenger searches were planned at some large railway stations and other “sensitive locations”, he said.

This is a fundamentally pointless idea. All that the introduction of airline-style security will achieve is increase the time and hassle involved in travelling anywhere. It’s just so-called ‘security theater’; smoke and mirrors designed to create a false sense of security without actually making things any safer.

All a potential terrorist will need to do is board a train at a smaller local station, and they’ll bypass the whole bloody lot. So millions of travellers waste millions of hours of their lives, all for nothing. And thousands of misanthropes will be given the opportunity to ruin people’s day just because they can.

I’ve already given up flying because the every increasing security and ever more draconian baggage restrictions make it too unpleasant an experience. Please don’t let rail travel go the same way.

I have nothing but contempt for any sheep-like Daily Mail readers that bleat “it’s better to be safe than sorry”. I think it’s tragic that people that stupid and gullible are allowed to vote.

I hope the train companies persuade the government how stupid this is.

Update: Christian Wolmar completely agrees with me.

This is the first time I’ve been to York Grand Opera House. Mostly Autumn traditionally play this venue towards the end of the year, and this time around they bought it forward by a month so Angie Gordon could play one last show before going on maternity leave.

This show also marked the return of Andy Jennings on drums, and saw Anne Marie Helder, who will be standing in for Angie for the December dates, joining the band, making them an eight-piece for one night only. It always takes a few dates for any new lineup to gel properly, so while this was still a very good gig, it couldn’t quite match the intensity of Bury Met back in June.

The set list was much the same as during the spring tour, although they dropped ‘Further from Home’, and bought back the oldies Heart Life, ‘Out of the Inn’ (the song about Hobbits), Angie’s flute showcase ‘Which Wood’, and the 12 minute epic Mother Nature, which I haven’t heard for far too long.

The biggest applause of the night went to Angie Gordon after her superb flute solo on ‘The Last Climb’; it must take some courage to play a gig when eight months pregnant.

Worst thing about the gig for me was that my seat was so far off to the right hand side of the theatre that, I couldn’t see Livvy Sparnenn. I’ll have to take care when booking seats next time round.

As seems to be a tradition after gigs in York, many hardcore fans ended up at the Old White Swan (I’ve been in this pub more times than my local this year!), where we were joined by a couple of members of the band.

I’ve been reading the Guardian Music Blog quite a bit lately. Perhaps it’s because it’s one of the few sites that isn’t blocked by the firewall at work, so I can access it during my lunch break,

This week, it asks what song made you love music?

What are the songs that turned you on? We’re not after coolness, nor the first record you bought, but the one that made the lightbulb come on in your head, widened your eyes and made you say: “So that’s what the fuss is all about.”

I can think of two obvious ones. The first is “Pinball Wizard”, first heard when I was aged in single figures. At the time I didn’t know what it was called, or who it was by. All I knew was that it sounded really cool.

Then in my teens, it was “Eyes of the World” from Rainbow’s “Down to Earth album, which I first heard on the Nicky Horne’s evening rock show on Capital Radio. Since pretty much the only rock and pop I’d heard before that was whatever got into the top 40, I had no idea this sort of music even existed. With that ominious-sounding intro stolen from Holst’s “Mars”, and that incredible guitar-shredding in the middle, it turned my into a rock fan overnight.

A long time since I’ve done any memes. This one was started by PZ Myers at Pharyngula as a means of demonstrating evolution in cyberspace. Like my source, I am not going to tap anyone; pick it up as you will.

First, the rules:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

• You can leave them exactly as is.
• You can delete any one question.
• You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.
• You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.

You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.
Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

The lineage:

• My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
• My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
• My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Primate Diaries.
• My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Thus Spake Zuska.
• My great-great-great-grandparent is Kate.
• My great-great-grandparent is Finally Maturing.
• My great-grandparent is Parts-n-Pieces
• My grandparent is I See Invisible People.
• My parent is Dave Does the Blog

The Questions and Answers:

• The best adult novel in SF/Fantasy is: The Book of the New Sun
• The best scary movie in modern pop culture is: The Wicker Man
• The best happy song in classic rock music is: Sabra Cadabra
• The best cult novel in historic fiction is: The Baroque Cycle
• The best concept album in progessive rock music is Brave

There seem to almost as many British female-fronted progressive bands as there are symphonic metal bands on the continent. I first heard of this band from a discussion on the Mostly Autumn forum, where it was recommended strongly enough that I ordered the album. After a few spins, it turned out to be a very worthwhile purchase indeed.

“Etarlis” is actually Mermaid Kiss’s third album. According to the liner notes, the songs are inspired by a fantasy adventure written over the years by Jamie Field and Evelyn Downing. It’s an epic tale of heroism and war rather than a parochal tale about fights outside the chip shop.

The keyboard-led music is strongly atmospheric and pastoral, with sparing use of lead guitar, significant use of flute, supplemented in places by oboe and cor anglais. The haunting melodies come from two distinctively different lead vocalists; Kate Belcher’s pure tones contrasting with Evelyn Downing’s more expressive style.

The closest musical reference point is probably the original incarnation of Karnataka, indeed Jonathan Edwards, formerly of Karnataka and now The Panic Room makes a guest appearance with a keyboard solo on ‘A Sea Change’. Troy Donockley.adds some uilleann pipes on the same track.

If you’re into celtic/ambient progressive rock with female vocals, you won’t go wrong by getting hold of this album. It’s available from the band’s website, www.mermaidkiss.co.uk.

Just after their excellent set at the Mostly Autumn Convention back in March, I remarked to bassist Paul Teasdale that in a couple of years time they might be giving Mostly Autumn a run for their money. A few minutes later the Mostlies launched into an absolute blinder of a set that seemed to emphasise for me the qualification ‘in a couple of years time’.

Just seven months later Breathing Space come up with an album that quite possibly tops the last Mostly Autumn release Heart Full of Sky.

Coming Up for Air isn’t really a prog album. There are no 12 minute songs about Hobbits on this one. It’s a quite commercial-sounding set with an 80s pop feel in places, evenly split between up-tempo pop/rock numbers and the sort of gorgeous sweeping ballads Iain Jennings used to write for Mostly Autumn. There’s no filler, and Iain has done a superb production job; the sound is crystal clear, and the tight arrangements don’t waste a note.

If the first album was really an Iain Jennings solo release, this one is very much a band effort, with writing credits shared between Iain Jennings, Olivia Sparnenn and Mark Rowan. Olivia’s vocals show how much she’s improved as a singer in the two years since the first album, and I’m seriously impressed by Mark Rowan’s guitar work. He’s not flashy, but every one of his solos fit the song perfectly. The album also features guest appearances from Liam Davidson, who contributes some soaring slide guitar on “Don’t Turn a Blind Eye”, and from John Hart, who contributes sax and flute.

Standouts are many; I love the beautiful “Rain Song”, a reworking of a song performed by Livvy and Chris Johnson when they supported Mostly Autumn two years ago. Another standout is “Searching for my Shadow”, another song of Livvy’s, with an instrumental section that has more than a hint of “Carpe Diem” about it.

This is yet another addition to the growing list of great 2007 albums. It’s available direct from the band’s website - www.breathingspaceband.info